Microsoft Doesn't Care, So Hack Your Own Update CD

I guess they figure once is enough. Microsoft finally did make an update CD, but they did nothing to publicize it and did not update it. You don't need themyou can make your own Windows Update Hack CD. It's not very convenient, but it lets you get secure without having to expose your system to the Internet first.

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After nagging by myself and others, Microsoft back in February finally came out with a Windows Update CD. It's a CD version of the key updates to Windows that you would get by running Windows Update.

Of course, Windows gets a lot of updates, so every time you go to the Windows Update site you download many megabytes. It's enough to discourage any user and enough to make a dial-up user give up and just be insecure. That's what was so cool about the Update CD: Everything, or almost everything, you needed would be on the CD and would install quickly. Then, if there was more necessary, it would be a relatively small download.

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But after releasing one CD in February, which was difficult to obtain and took weeks or even months to deliver, Microsoft has let the Update CD idea pass. I asked a while ago about any updates to it, and I'm still waiting for a response. Too bad. I don't see why they don't want to do it. But if they were serious about it, they would have made it much easier to get, they would have updated it frequently, and they would have provided ISO images for download so anyone could burn CDs for anyone else.

But you don't need those CDs. You can make one yourself. Sort of. Through a little-known feature of the Windows Update site, you can download the updates yourself, individually, and apply them yourself. It's not perfect, and it's not as good as Windows Update or the Microsoft Update CD, but it has a lot of advantages over Windows Update for a lot of people. For example, when you first boot that machine up and go to Windows Update to install your security patches, you might well be attacked utilizing one of the vulnerabilities patched in the patches you haven't got to yet.

Obviously, someone will need to be connected to the Internet with Internet Explorer for this scheme to work, so the point is to do this prophylactically. You make this CD, and then you can take it to your poor friend/relative's house, the one on AOL with a 28.8K-bps connection, and get them just a little better off.